BBC News Online: World: Middle East

Egyptian clerics ban surrogate motherhood

Muslim clerics in Egypt have banned women from acting as surrogate mothers -- bearing children for other women who are themselves unable to conceive.

They say the practice violates the bonds of marriage.

The decree -- issued by the highest religious authority for Sunni Muslims in Egypt -- also said widows should not become pregnant using sperm saved from their dead husbands.

It ruled that, since death ends marriage, such insemination would mean the woman was being impregnated by someone who was no longer her husband. The BBC Cairo correspondent says medical advances such as surrogacy and organ transplants have produced a number of ethical dilemmas for Muslim scholars in recent years.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service